


Quicksilver

by lydjah



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: M/M, featuring: a cameo in which Jeremy thinks 'little shit' fondly, kink: Jeremy giving Jean all the love and support he needs to heal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 06:55:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19740520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lydjah/pseuds/lydjah
Summary: Jean’s first month at USC is nothing but darkness. Of course, he is used to this. The only colour Jean can anchor himself to in that time is Jeremy Knox’s bright, golden hair.Fucking martyr, Jean thinks in savage French.





	Quicksilver

_ Moreau _

Jean’s first month at USC is nothing but darkness. Of course, he is used to this; the unending, suffocating blackness of the Nest, the iniquity of Riko’s dark eyes and malicious smile, the gloaming of his room at Abby’s with the curtains drawn, as he tried to drown out her kindness.

In fact, the only colour Jean can anchor himself to in that time is Jeremy Knox’s bright, golden hair, and that’s just through sheer saturation on the part of Jeremy; he moves them both straight into a double, giving up his hard earned right to a captains’ single suite for the sake of making sure the damaged French kid doesn’t disappear into the abyss. _Fucking martyr,_ Jean thinks in savage French. It means that Jeremy is _always_ there; he’s merrily cooking breakfasts that Jean barely touches in the mornings, he’s sitting on the couch a few feet away from him as Jean pretends to be watching bad summer daytime TV, and he’s there when Jean awakes, screaming, in the middle of the night, when the world is _black, so black, like the Nest, he never left, still trapped -_ and Jeremy is kneeling next to Jean’s bed, soothing with delicate fingertips and his halo hair is something to focus on until the terror ebbs.

The first time this happens is the first night Jean is at USC, and it’s just the two of them in their suite. If Jean had been more in his mind at the time, he would have been overly conscious that Jeremy is giving up his holidays to be there and wondered _why_ , why would he bother, when Jean was _worthless, broken, useless, as good as dead._ Jean wakes screaming, the sound strangled, unable to separate the memory of Riko’s fingers around his throat from the reality of the USC dorm, and within a second, Jeremy is there, touching Jean’s face and saying something like _just a nightmare, safe, I got you._ But all Jean can see is darkness and _Riko_ and so he lashes out, with a violence he hasn’t managed in years. But Jeremy doesn’t quit; he puts himself behind Jean and his arms come around his chest like a vice, holding his flailing limbs down and the threads of his soul, as if he can hold all of Jean’s pieces together through sheer force of will.

And in the morning, Jean sees Jeremy’s brilliantly coloured black eye, and his even more brilliant smile, unchanged, and he feels a quiet regret that he doesn’t ( _can’t)_ vocalise.

_ Knox _

Jeremy FaceTime’s Kevin, mostly to show off his black eye - because as devastated as he feels for Jean, Jeremy finds it kind of _funny_ \- Captain Sunshine, finally sporting a bruise that looks like it’s from throwing down after all these years of Exy and it’s not even from a game _._ He’s going to wear this bruise like a badge of honour, he thinks, and one day Jean will remember that moment and understand how far he’s come - of that, Jeremy has fierce faith.

For his part, Kevin huffs a laugh and calls Jeremy an idiot.

Blessedly, Josten is in the background, because they’ve just been practicing and he looks into the screen with those knowing, gut-punch blue eyes, his head tilted like Jeremy is a curiosity to him.

“Try not touching him,” Josten says, and Kevin huffs again. There’s a noise in the background and Josten looks over his shoulder for a minute, and when his gaze returns to Jeremy, there’s a tiny curl at the corner of his mouth.

“But he’s going to hurt himself,” Jeremy says, frowning.

“I mean-”Neil exhales heavily, like he’s never had to put this reasoning into words before and Jeremy should just _get_ it. Little shit, Jeremy thinks, fondly. “I mean, give him a chance to say no to being touched.” He says this with such conviction, that for a flash, Jeremy wonders, thinking of the way Neil and Minyard move in perfect sync, even with metres between them.

Kevin’s lips are pressed together, and there’s knowledge in his eyes too. Jeremy wonders if it’s unfair to ask Kevin to tell him everything, about the Nest, about Edgar Allan, about Riko. He wonders if knowing will help him help Jean, or just crush him.

He realises he’s been silent for a beat too long when Josten’s auburn head reappears on the camera. “He likes hot chocolate and _Le Petit Prince.”_ Josten shrugs and disappears, calling to Minyard, and Jeremy is sharp enough to note the half-a-dozen emotions that quickly work across Kevin’s face, presumably at the thought of Neil at Evermore, or maybe at the memory of leaving Jean behind, before his visage clears and he offers Jeremy one more tidbit.

“Ravens do everything in partnerships. There’s no sense of being alone, no independence from the actions of your partner; there is only survival and punishment for both. He will not cope with being left alone.”

“I don’t want any Raven ideologies in my team or on my court.”

Kevin’s quirked brow is somehow understanding and derisive at the same time. “You cannot break a poorly healed limb after a decade and expect it to be perfect, even after you re-set it.” Kevin’s gaze slides past the camera for a second, to where Jeremy presumes Josten and Minyard are. “You accept that the bone was broken, allow it to heal properly, and live with the memory of the break.”

Jeremy thinks for a long moment, and Kevin waits, the queen on his cheekbone stark and strangely hopeful. Jeremy begins slowly, “So I take something bad and make it into something better?”

Kevin shrugs. “There’s value in him trusting you, and in you being a better version of _that_ for him. Both on the court and with the team.” Kevin’s gaze wanders again, before snapping back to Jeremy, his green eyes ablaze with something dark and fierce. “Or you can break that out of him like Riko did with his will to fight, and hope it doesn’t derail his recovery too much.” Shutters draw behind Kevin’s eyes, and all at once he is faraway. “Who can say what the better option is?”

Jeremy is aghast, but he fights to keep that off his face. Kevin Day does not need, nor want, anyone’s pity. “I’ll help him,” is all he says; a promise to Kevin, to Jean, to himself, to the universe. A challenge to Riko’s ghost. _I’ll help him, you bastard, and he’ll be better than you could have ever imagined._

Kevin smiles; not his press smile, his real one, as raw as the dawn. “Then I made the right call.”

_ Moreau _

Jean’s relationship with darkness is interesting, he thinks with a wry and bitter twist in his gut. On the one hand, after so many years in the Nest, he’s finding it difficult to sleep with the moonlight filtering around the corners of the curtains in his and Jeremy’s room, and even just the lightness of the walls not being painted pitch black is bothersome. On the other hand, he fears the true darkness, fears being alone with his nightmares, fears waking up in a room the same colour as Riko’s eyes.

Jeremy has stopped immediately grabbing him in the midst of his nightmares, for which Jean is grateful. He doesn’t want to hurt Jeremy - no matter how frustrating that sunny bastard is sometimes - and though he knows Jeremy was just trying to stop Jean from accidentally hurting himself, he had stared guiltily at that black eye for over a week until it faded, whenever Jeremy wasn’t looking.

What Jeremy does instead, Jean finds, is infinitely more heartbreaking. He still comes to Jean’s bedside, but he holds his hands out, his long fingers softly splayed, and he asks Jean over and over through the haze of the nightmare;

“ _Can I Jean? Can I? Can I?”_

And when Jean eventually nods, Jeremy climbs into bed beside him and wraps him in that same vice hold, with arms like steel bands around his heaving chest. Jean allows it, allows his shoulders to lean into Jeremy’s chest and he grips Jeremy’s forearms with biting fingers. In the daylight, Jean sometimes catches sight of ovular purple marks on the soft skin along the inside of Jeremy’s arms and the rush of silent guilt is always intense. But Jeremy insists he doesn’t mind, and it’s hard not to believe him when the sunlight filters through his golden curls and he looks like an archangel.

_ Knox _

At all other times though, Jean flinches away from touch. He allows Jeremy to sit next to him on the couch when they watch TV, but there’s always a few inches between them. Jeremy doesn’t mind though. Jean has to be allowed to move at his own pace, and Jeremy bristles every time he thinks about the fact that it’s been years since Jean felt a touch that wasn’t meant to hurt him, to break him, to _punish_.

Jeremy makes a study of him, and catalogs Jean every day. He’s painfully silent in the face of all things; and Jeremy knows why – it is pure _survival_. Jean stopped fighting in the Nest, because it only ever made things worse. But he’s also watchful; Jean’s baleful grey eyes follow Jeremy’s movements around their suite almost constantly. Jeremy doesn’t mind - it’s a far sight better than Jean determinedly pretending Jeremy didn’t exist, only to explode at him at the smallest provocation, as had been the pattern of their first few days together. Jean was like a cat who’d been stuffed in a box and tormented; suspicious of kindness and love, ready to scratch and claw and bite anyone who came within range.

Because it was holidays, and the focus was on a still physically healing Jean, they didn’t leave their room much in that first month or so. Jeremy is kind of grateful for that; as much he loves being outdoors, he’s also very much like a dog on a scent. His whole heart is bent on giving this man what he needs to heal. Jeremy can’t do it for him, but maybe he can take some of the shit until Jean feels his burden is slightly less.

Jean’s heavily accented words are few and far between, but Jeremy likes to think he’s learning the hidden language behind Jean’s eyes, the language that transcends English, French and everything in between. Sometimes though, the shutters are down and the silence is so profound, and it looks like Jean’s collapsing in on himself. He can make himself seem so small for such a tall man, and it breaks Jeremy’s heart. When Jean is like this, he looks haunted, and Jeremy feels that look behind his own eyes at night when he lays awake and listens to Jean breathe.

_ Moreau _

Sometimes, Jean feels like there’s a fever in his bones, in the marrow of him. He feels the mirrors whispering, and the shadows seeing, and he wakes screaming. Sweat sticks his hair to his forehead, and he thinks he gasps Jeremy’s name, or maybe he just thinks it, but it doesn’t matter anyway because Jeremy is front of him. He kneels on Jean’s bed and reaches for him, stopping just short. _Can I?_

Jean nods and Jeremy presses his hand to Jean’s face, covering the three on his cheekbone with gentle pressure. Jean finds himself tucked against Jeremy’s side – amusing when Jean is six-foot-two and Jeremy is five-eight _max_ – with Jeremy’s gentle hand cradling the back of Jean’s skull. Jeremy is always gentle, Jean thinks, even when he’s firm. Even when the waves of Jean’s rage, and grief, and trauma and _everything_ breaks over him, Jeremy proves time and time again, that he’s not going anywhere.

_Maybe this one won’t leave him behind_ , Jean thinks. He turns his face into the curve of Jeremy’s neck and inhales him, glad for the minute to feel something other than his own skin, because it’s smothering him slowly.

_Knox_

Laila and Alvarez bang into Jeremy and Jean’s room almost the second they get back to the dorm after holidays, and Jeremy is glad they’re too busy being complete idiots to notice Jean jump a foot in the air at the sound the door makes. Jeremy carefully puts himself between the girls at the door and Jean across the room, half concealing Jean with his body. Alvarez greets Jeremy with a huge smile and punch to the shoulder, and then her eyes slide past him to their new teammate.

“Bonjour, Sir Paris!” she exclaims, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. Jeremy winces.

Jean’s response is immediate and scathing, accompanied by a contemptuous lift of his right eyebrow. “I’m from Marseille, you _idiot_.” Laila snorts with laughter, and Alvarez’s jaw drops open a little.

Jeremy jumps in, his hands up pacifyingly, “Parisians are a source of great angst for those who are from _Marseille.”_

Jean’s jaw is set, his chin defiant, his eyes daring Alvarez to insult him – however playfully – further. Alvarez just grins though, looking back to Laila with unveiled excitement. “And least he’s not a fucking Raven clone anymore!” she laughs, and helps herself to Jeremy’s OJ, straight from the bottle.

It’s not without its angst, of course, but slowly Jean becomes accustomed to the Trojans, as the rest of the team returns from holidays and training begins again. That’s not to say it’s not rough, because it is, Jeremy can see that plain as day. Jean’s silences around their teammates are everlong, and sullen, and Jeremy doesn’t know if that’s worse than his rage. He wants so desperately for the Trojans to see Jean as he does, and for them to love him, and he’s equally proud of them when they just accept Jean as _Jean_ , and react to all of him with what’s akin to a shrug. And Jeremy can see that Jean slowly starts to realise that these people will not punish him for regaining his will to fight, and that maybe he doesn’t have to direct that fight at them.

The word _stupid_ sounds sexy in Jean’s accent, Jeremy thinks, and it’s a word Jean throws around a lot. At first, it’s said with venom, but as the Trojans continue to laugh it off as _just Jean being Jean_ , it starts to become a little bit more like a term of endearment – though Jeremy is one-thousand percent sure Jean would rather throw himself off the dorm roof rather than admit to that. And it’s just like that, that Jeremy realises they are having good days, that bleed into _good nights_ , nights where Jean doesn’t wake screaming.

But it’s not without its angst.

The Trojans welcome-back party goes full steam ahead; Jeremy walks into the USC Exy common area, and his brain isn’t sure what to comprehend first; Alvarez throwing back shots to cheers of _neck, neck, neck_ , or maybe Laila destroying Barker at a handstand pushup competition, or maybe the beer pong game happening by the window. Music with a heavy bass pumps out of Caro’s speakers; Jeremy can feel the vibrations up through his feet. Behind him, Jean hovers nervously.

It took a lot of convincing to even get Jean this far – he had shaken his head, eyes widening with quiet horror. “They tolerate me, Jeremy, but I don’t want to impose on them,” he had said. “I will ruin their fun,” he had said, when Jeremy argued. All of Jeremy’s debates were sound; it was team bonding, Jean was a part of the team, _starting backliner_ , if he was overwhelmed after ten minutes, Jeremy would let him leave with no questions asked. Finally, Jean had relented, with a look in his eye that Jeremy thought ( _hoped)_ was maybe the beginnings of trust.

“El Capitano! Monsieur Frenchie!” Alvarez shouts, spotting them across the room. Jeremy feels Jean wince behind him, and he laughs a little.

“In my book, an affectionate nickname means you’re fitting right in,” he says to Jean, keeping his voice low and calming. Jean just grimaces.

They allow Alvarez to drag them to the drinks table – or rather, Jeremy does, because she knows better than to lay an unexpected and uninvited hand on Jean, though he trails behind Jeremy anyway – and holds out two cups of punch. Jeremy knows his team, and has no doubt it is deadly stuff.

“You don’t have to,” is all he says to Jean, before accepting his own cup. Alvarez smiles at Jean encouragingly, but he just shakes his head and swallows heavily. She shrugs, grinning, and downs it for him.

Jean lasts over an hour, and Jeremy feels such a pride in him that whenever he looks at Jean he grins. He doesn’t mind that Jean sticks close by his side all night. He remembers Kevin’s words, and thinks, Kevin would be proud of him too. He doesn’t say that though; they don’t talk about Kevin. That part of Jean is still too raw.

Recovery is delicate though, as Jeremy has seen, and after a few cups of punch, he’s not as vigilant as maybe he should have been in Jean’s first large group social experience. They are sitting side by side in a circle with Alvarez, Laila, Barker and a few others, and Jean is silent as he observes the chit chat, and Jeremy is aware of Jean’s knee touching his own. In his distraction, it takes him a few minutes to tune into the conversation that is happening amongst a group a few metres from them, about recent Exy scandals, though his every nerve comes alight when he hears the name _Riko_ thrown around.

Jean stiffens, and their circle, realizing, falls silent. Jeremy opens his mouth to soothe Jean, but then the name is said again, and Jean is on his feet before the words can even reach Jeremy’s lips.

Jeremy turns to see Jean’s tall form disappearing out the door, away from the party, and after a moment of worrying his bottom lip, he follows. He will deal with his worried teammates – and the careless ones – tomorrow; as it has been since June, Jean’s welfare is Jeremy’s main concern. Jean is already in the shower by the time Jeremy gets into their room, fully clothed, the water beating down on him relentlessly as he sobs. When Jeremy steps into the bathroom, Jean looks up, grey eyes ablaze with grief and anger, and that is the first time he asks Jeremy to end it all, and put him out of his misery.

Jeremy feels like his heart will rip itself out of its chest. He stares into Jean’s grey eyes, the colour of quicksilver, and he knows he’s crying too because his cheeks are burning and Jean’s expression is anguished again, like he hates himself for hurting Jeremy. But Jeremy swallows heavily and kicks off his shoes and socks. He tests the water with his hand to make sure Jean isn’t burning himself, and then, as Jean buries his face in his hands and the silent grief wracks him, Jeremy folds himself behind Jean’s back. He settles with a leg either side of Jean, and he buries his fingers in dark locks, guiding Jean back onto his chest. Jeremy’s own hair is plastered to his skull like molten gold, and his raglan sticks to every plane of his back and chest, but he doesn’t give a shit about his own comfort. He smooths Jean’s hair back off his forehead over and over again, and with his lips against Jean’s ear, he starts to whisper _Le Petit Prince._ After speaking to Kevin and Josten he had begun learning it in the original French, for Jean.

Slowly, Jean stills in his arms, and his breathing evens as he listens.

_“_ _Lorsque j’avais six ans j’ai vu, une fois, une magnifique image, dans un livre sur la Forêt Vierge qui s’appelait “Histoires Vécues”. Ça représentait un serpent boa qui avalait un fauve. Voilà la copie du dessin.”_ Jeremy knows his accent is probably awful to Jean, but Jean is silent, listening raptly.

_“_ You learned that for me?” Jean asks, barely more than a strangled whisper. Jeremy nods against the side of Jean’s head. Somehow, their fingers entwine, and Jean presses their hands against his mouth. Jeremy feels Jean exhale shakily against their knuckles, and he feels feverish, despite the water having long since run cold.

_Moreau_

Jeremy has a sprinkle of tiny freckles across his nose and cheekbones, like tiny stars dotted in freewheeling constellations across sun-kissed skin. It’s a rare night that Jeremy is asleep before Jean, and a shaft of moonlight cuts across his face, bleaching his golden hair a bone-white. One of Jeremy’s arms is flung upwards on his pillow, forearm across forehead, and the other out to the side, hanging off the edge of the bed. Jean watches him, eyes lingering on the soft curves of his fingers. Riko’s hands were claws, made for breaking and bruising and scratching and all other methods of causing pain. Jeremy’s have never done anything of the kind.

Jean’s heart is racing, and he feels like his chest is too tight to constrain it. He tries counting, he tries deep breathing, tries every suggestion his new counsellor has ever made, and still his heart pounds a vicious beat against the inside of his sternum. The shadows on the ceiling still seem to move, and he can still feel Riko’s fingers ripping chunks of his hair out. It’s all grown back now, in soft dark waves, but the feeling has never left him. He tips his head to look at Jeremy again, and after a moment, his resolve steels and he gets up, crossing the room.

Jean kneels next to Jeremy’s bed, his bare knees cold on the hardwood. He touches his fingers lightly to the inside of Jeremy’s wrist, where a blue vein beats with a soft rhythm. Jeremy jerks awake and Jean regretfully thinks about how Jeremy seems to have become a much lighter sleeper since Jean moved in with him.

“Jean?” Jeremy says, blinking, his voice hoarse with sleep. Jean shivers.

“May I?” he gestures vaguely between them, and Jeremy nods, sliding himself across the bed towards the wall until there’s room for Jean. Jeremy curls around him, chest against Jean’s back, and he runs his fingers through Jean’s hair slowly, over and over.

“You okay?” Jeremy asks, after a minute.

Jean thinks about saying yes, but it’s not true, so he bites it back. “I was going to kill myself on graduation night,” he eventually says, quietly, and is immediately, internally horrified at himself. Jeremy’s hand stills in his hair; he props himself up on his elbow and looks down at Jean, wide-awake now.

“Jean,” is all he says. His mouth caresses the word in a way that Jean has never heard before, not even from native French speakers.

“That’s not my plan anymore,” Jean says, turning his head to look Jeremy in the eye, and surprised to find he means it.

Jeremy exhales heavily, and leans down, pressing his forehead gently against Jean’s. Jean’s stomach hitches, and he holds his breath until Jeremy speaks again.

“I could not be more glad that you’re alive, and that you’re here.” Jean hears no untruth in Jeremy’s voice, and he has to break their forehead contact before he cracks. Jeremy lays back down, his mouth against Jean’s hair, and his arms around him like a safety net.

_Knox_

Sometimes, Jeremy wonders if he’s good enough. Like maybe Kevin picked the wrong person for this job. But then he always immediately regrets thinking of Jean as a _job_. Other days, he gets a small smile out of Jean, as rare and precious as a golden hens’ tooth, and he thinks, _yeah I got this._ He thinks, _that smile._ He thinks, _that man._ He thinks, _fuck._

Jean trusts him, and has given so much of himself to Jeremy to prove that trust, that Jeremy feels safe showing Jean that he’s not as perfect as everyone likes to make out. He tells Jean how much pressure he got from his parents in high school, to perform, succeed, get a full ride to college. He tells Jean how it’s only now, in college, with a lot of help from the team psychologist, that he’s learned to deal with that in a healthy way, so perfectionism and anxiety doesn’t take over his life.

Jean listens to everything Jeremy says with the same level of investment. He never makes Jeremy feel like his experiences are any less important or formative than being systematically tortured and brainwashed for years, even though Jeremy can’t help but feel it is.

Jean asks him questions about his parents, his siblings, and his life growing up. As he grows more comfortable with Jeremy, he asks him about his relationships, and doesn’t even bat an eyelid in the face of Jeremy’s bisexuality. Jeremy knows there’s something Jean skirts around, some part of himself he holds back in these conversations, but he trusts Jean will come to him with it in his own time and on his own terms. Letting Jean heal himself, with an abundance of care, is kind of Jeremy’s whole thing.

Jean likes to watch movies, Jeremy discovers, and as a bit of a movie lover himself, they spend a lot of their downtime together in their suite, watching films. In contrast to when Jean first came to USC and would sit as far away from Jeremy as he could on the couch, with his knees pulled to his chest, now he allows Jeremy to lean on him. Even better, he lets himself use Jeremy’s lap as a pillow sometimes, and Jeremy always gets a thrill when Jean hangs his long legs over the arm of the couch, all casual French elegance, and lays back against Jeremy’s thighs, asking with that extremely expressive right eyebrow if it’s okay. Jeremy always says that it is.

The day that Jeremy finds out, they are in this position on the couch, watching the original _Blade Runner._ Jeremy has seen it before, and so keeps getting distracted, running his fingers through Jean’s hair, because it always relaxes him. Jean is wearing a loose USC raglan, laying on his side with his head resting on Jeremy’s legs. Extending down beneath the neckline of the shirt, Jeremy can see a scar that runs down the exact line of Jean’s spine. Jeremy isn’t sure how far it goes beyond the borders of Jean’s shirt. He stares at it for a long time; it’s so straight, so very _deliberate;_ there is no universe in which it could be the result of an accident.

Eventually, he asks about it. Jean is silent for a long time. The slope of his neck is tense, the knuckles of his hand bone white where he grips the remote. Jeremy holds his breath. Maybe Jean wasn’t as there as Jeremy thought he was, maybe they hadn’t made _that_ much progress toward him trusting Jeremy.

Jean answers slowly, deliberately, each word weighed like a guillotine about to fall. “I was... given... to other Ravens on five different occasions.”

Jean pauses to allow Jeremy to discern the meaning behind his words. Jean never says Riko’s name out loud, but whenever he talks like this - of his past, in quiet, haunted tones - Riko is always the source. Jeremy’s heart thuds and his ears grow hot with rage, but he brushes his thumb over Jean’s cheekbone gently to let him know he’s safe.

“Four times I fought back, and I was punished. He had the other Raven give me this scar as a reminder of how easily my spine could be severed, and how my life would be forfeit to _his_ torture until I eventually gave up and died. The fifth time, I did nothing. After that reaction, it was boring for him, and there was never another.” Jeremy can’t control the shake in his limbs, but Jean is very still. Too still, Jeremy thinks, containing all his rage and grief within himself when all Jeremy wishes is to be able to take it away for him.

“I begged the first four times,” Jean says eventually, through clenched teeth. “I said ‘ _please don’t do this to me.’”_ Jean turns his face toward Jeremy’s thigh, and he realises Jean is _ashamed_. Of a natural reaction to unfathomable cruelty. Jeremy burns with a fury he’s never known before. He wishes Riko weren’t dead, so he could do the job himself.

“Don’t,” Jeremy says fiercely, taking Jean’s hand and gripping it tight. “Don’t you be ashamed.”

“The fifth time I didn’t say a word.”

Jeremy doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know if he should hug Jean, or if he himself wants to cry, or break something. All he knows is he wants Jean’s dam to break, wants the stony mask to crack, wants to see some emotion on the corners of Jean’s beautiful mouth.

In the end, Jean decides for him. He sits up, tucking one leg under himself and puts his hands in his lap, and he leans forward until his forehead meets Jeremy’s, gently. Jeremy holds himself back from touching Jean, mirroring him with his hands in his laps. They were doing this Jean’s way, or no way at all, Jeremy was determined.

“Numbers are important. Shall I list them?” Jean asks, his voice husky, stressed.

Jeremy knows this conversation will break his heart, but he also knows he’ll be strong for Jean, because he knows Jean needs to get this poison out somehow.

“I’m here for you, no matter _what_ ,” is all Jeremy says.

Jean closes his eyes to speak. “Two hundred and sixty-six stitches total, not including all the ones I needed after Renee saved me. Six broken fingers.” Jean splays his hands out and points to each one that has been broken, one by one.

“Four ‘ _accidental’_ falls down staircases.”

Jeremy slides his fingers between Jean’s and strokes his thumbs across Jean’s.

“He waterboarded me ten times. He thought that was _hilarious._ He never let me miss a single day of practice, or a single game. Last month, when you sent me home from training with that migraine, that’s the first time I’ve ever not trained because of injury or illness.”

A single tear, crystalline, flawlessly formed, wells in the corner of Jean’s eye and races down his cheek. It hovers on the precipice of Jean’s perfect Cupid’s bow, and Jeremy lifts his hand to catch it with his thumb. Before he can stop himself, his thumb gently tracks across Jean’s plush upper lip, and those quicksilver eyes close again.

He taps his cheekbone. “Number three in the perfect court, but I should have been number four.”

“Six and four.” Jean’s eyes are still closed, his voice barely a whisper. “The number of yellow flecks in your left eye and right eye, respectively.”

Jeremy’s breath hitches. Their foreheads are still touching, their hands intertwined, and it’s a wonder Jean can’t hear Jeremy’s heart pounding. They inhale in unison, and Jeremy is sure _something_ is about to happen -

The door crashes open, in classic Alvarez style, and she announces herself with a declaration of hunger, going straight for the fridge. Jean springs away from Jeremy, his eyes wild, and he disappears into their bedroom as his name dies in Jeremy’s throat.

“He alright?” Alvarez asks in response to the door slamming. She speaks through a mouthful of cold lasagna, with a quirked brow. Jeremy watches her dark eyes observing his flushed cheeks, his clenched fists, his tense shoulders. “Are _you_ alright?”

“Fine,” Jeremy eventually grinds out, with a smile he has no doubt Alvarez can see right through.

_ Moreau _

Their Edgar Allan regular season game is a living nightmare. Jeremy offers to not even bring Jean, to leave him at USC, because Jean’s respiratory rate skyrockets when they talk about it after practice a week out. But Jean vehemently declines; being left behind would be even worse somehow.

Coach looks convinced, but Jeremy worries his bottom lip, and Jean can feel the muscle working in his own jaw as he tries to stave off a panic attack with sheer force of will.

Unlikely backup comes from Laila, who bumps her knee against Jean’s and says, “Gotta face the demon eventually. Moreau will kill it, and if they so much as touch one perfect hair on his head-” she breaks off to grin toothily, like a shark, “-then we will kill _them_.”

There’s a rousing response from the team to that statement, and Jean looks at Laila, shocked for a moment. But then he sets his jaw and nods at Jeremy, who smiles weakly and relents. Jean knows Jeremy is just worried about him, but Laila is right. If the Trojans have to beat Edgar Allan in finals, Jean wants to be his best. He can’t be facing them for the first time in a do-or-die game. An unexpected, desperate hunger to be a Trojan champion arises within him. How he’d love his success to be outside of the Ravens.

On the bus though, the panic comes back in full force, and Jean’s heart rate goes through the roof, like his heart is trying to smash its way free of his rib cage. He’s finding it hard to breathe, and he feels nauseated as they roll ever closer to Evermore. Jeremy sits beside him, and gently guides Jean’s head between his knees with a soft hand, which then slides down between his shoulder blades. He murmurs for him to just breathe, and he never takes his hand away.

“I promise, the second this game is over, I’ll get you out of there,” Jeremy says, the cadence of his voice low and soothing. “I will _never_ leave you behind.”

Jean believes him.

_Knox_

Jean casts a last, desperate look at the night sky as the Trojans descend into the Nest. It’s a place that puts them all on edge, but poor Jean is bone-white, his grey eyes wild, and his hands twisting and tearing anxiously at everything they come into contact with. Jeremy does everything he can to keep him calm, hoping that once they’re on the court, Jean will be overcome with the game focus Jeremy has seen in him a dozen times before and the jeers of the Ravens players and supporters will be drowned out by the end goal.

Jeremy is worried right up until the first play, where Jean strips the Ravens striker perfectly and the crowd is momentarily silenced as it becomes _abundantly_ clear what Riko’s poisonous temperament cost them. After that, he just plays and trusts that Jean is stronger than any of them have given him credit for.

They win eight-seven, a hairs’ breadth from overtime, which Jeremy doesn’t think Jean could cope with. Jeremy blinks once at the scoreboard, to make sure it’s real, then he runs at Jean. He grabs either side of Jean’s helmet and pulls him down, into an approximation of being forehead to forehead.

“You were amazing,” Jeremy says, wildly out of breath, but so happy he could cartwheel.

Behind the grate of his helmet, Jean starts to make a face, but Jeremy silences him with a gentle tap of his hand on the side of Jean’s helmet. “ _Amazing,”_ he repeats, for emphasis.

Jean smiles, and for a moment, it’s his sharp and vicious game smile. But then it softens into his Jeremy smile. Jeremy’s stomach turns over.

When they get back to USC, the team is very clearly gearing up for a huge party. Coach throws his hands up, in a gesture that says ‘I know nothing,’ and he leaves them to it. The team chatters around Jean, in full on scheming mode, and he even lets Laila loop her arm through his elbow, Jeremy notes with interest. But Jeremy knows him best, better than anyone ever has or will he thinks, and he can see the hollowness under Jean’s eyes, and the echoes of ghosts in his expression that mean he needs to be alone for a while. He needs time to process.

When they get back to their room, Jeremy jerks his chin upwards, towards the roof, and then goes to distract the others for a while. He knows that Jean knows Jeremy will check on him soon.

Jeremy has a few shots with Laila and Alvarez - for courage, a voice in his mind whispers, but he ignores that - to keep the girls off his back, and then he slips out when Caro distracts everyone’s attention with a raucous game of quarters.

He finds Jean on the roof. He’s dressed in soft black tracksuit pants, knees drawn up to his chest, and a USC Exy hoodie that Jeremy recognises with a start as _his._ The name _Knox_ is emblazoned across the back, pulled a little tighter across Jean’s broader shoulders than it would be on Jeremy’s own. This stops him dead for a minute in the doorway, until the door clicks shut and Jean’s head turns toward him. One corner of Jean’s mouth curls, in a crooked, sweet smile, and he pats the spot next to him.

Like a record skipping beats, Jeremy blinks and finds himself sitting down next to Jean. Their shoulders just touch, and as it increasingly has been recently, their closeness is overwhelming to Jeremy. The lump in his throat will not go away, and he feels like he’s standing still while the world spins off axis.

Jean rests his chin on his forearms, eyes staring out across a million lights laid out before them. “Are you okay?” he asks, tilting his head to side-eye Jeremy.

Jeremy makes one attempt to speak, and finds the words stuck in his throat. He swallows heavily and tries again. “Yeah. I just can’t get over how proud I am of you.”

Jean flushes lightly, along his high cheekbones, and he rubs at his jaw. “You think too much of me.”

“No,” Jeremy disagrees vehemently. “No one has ever thought _quite_ enough of you, I think.”

Jean is silent, his eyes on Jeremy for a long time. Then, his gaze slides away. Jeremy continues to watch him, wondering. If he turned left, and Jean turned right, would the curves of the earth bring their paths back to cross again? He feels like they have been orbiting each other since they met, inextricably linked. Jean is still healing, Jeremy thinks. Should he wait, let the tide run its course, trust fate? Or should he dive head first, as he now recognises he wants to, to feel Jean on his skin?

Beside him, Jean sighs for a long moment, and then takes Jeremy’s hand from where it carelessly rests on his own knee. Jean gently curves Jeremy’s fingers around his own, and brings both their hands back to rest on his knees. Jean then leans down and presses his slightly parted lips against Jeremy’s knuckles.

Goosebumps erupt in a wave down Jeremy’s back as Jean lingers, and he _aches_. He doesn’t know what for, or what to do, and he thinks Jean is the most beautiful creature he’s ever laid eyes, but then Jean’s hand is unexpectedly untangling itself, and Jeremy is devastated until he realises the door is swinging open and the party is spilling out onto the roof in search of them.

_Moreau_

Jean’s never been kissed in the right way, he thinks to himself, as he lays in bed listening to the sounds of Jeremy pottering around the kitchen. It’s late, and he’s making them lunches for tomorrow, and it’s the first time they’ve really been alone since the Edgar Allan game and the rooftop. Caro is having relationship drama, and has been in their suite a lot since the game, seeking Jeremy’s advice, company and god knows what else.

There had been biting, cold kisses in the Nest, during those five times. Jean doesn’t count those. He knows kissing wasn’t meant to be like _that_. He throws his arm across his forehead and huffs out a breath as he hears Laila at the door to their suite. Jeremy was the Captain, and Jean still forgot sometimes that he wasn’t _always_ the one who needed Knox the most.

_Knox_

“Are you going to do something about it?” Laila asks, her voice low to avoid being heard in the bedroom.

“About what?” Jeremy replies, a little more snappishly than he intended.

Laila nods her head significantly in the direction of the bedroom. “That. _Him._ The way you _look_ at him. God, Jere. You’re literally _pining -_ I’ve never seen that outside a book, or movie.”

Jeremy sighs and slumps against the fridge. There is no point denying it - Alvarez and the other Trojans might be as thick as two bricks, but Laila has always been perceptive. 

“Talk to him,” she urges, when he says nothing.

“I don’t think I can,” Jeremy says, hearing the desperation in his own voice. “The things Riko did to him, Laila, the things he ordered on him -” Jeremy breaks off, looking up at her helplessly. “The power imbalance, I... I’m his captain. I _can’t._ ”

“Maybe that’s it though,” Laila says, leaning forward on her elbows and flipping one brown braid over her shoulder. “You’re not Riko Moriyama. Maybe you need to give Moreau a choice. He’s never had one before in his life. He’s never thought he could have something he wants.”

Laila takes a deep breath, and then she smiles in her soft Laila-way. “You spend all this time looking at him, Jere. What you don’t seem to notice is him looking at you too.”

_ Moreau _

Jean hears the front door click shut as Laila presumably leaves. He’s not even pretending to sleep, although with the bedroom door shut he could only hear soft murmuring as his teammates talked.

There’s a long silence, and Jean waits, his heart racing in the darkness.

The door opens.

_Knox_

Jean is awake, Jeremy notes immediately; he is intimately familiar with the difference between Jean’s awake breathing and his asleep breathing. He’s looking at the ceiling, his grey eyes bathed in a swathe of moonlight that makes them translucent, moon-like. Jeremy feels his breath steal away, as it always seems to do when he looks upon Jean Moreau.

His feet take him to the edge of Jean’s bed, and he sits on it, as Jean props himself up on his elbow. He extends a hand and pauses, asking with his eyes. Jean nods, and Jeremy traces his thumb across Jean’s bottom lip. His lips part slightly, and Jeremy’s heart catches in his throat. He lingers, and Jean never looks away.

Jeremy lowers his hand to Jean’s thigh, and meets his gaze again. Neither moves, and the moment stretches into an eternity that Jeremy never wants to leave. Every time Jean has said his name since June, Jeremy’s everything has stopped. He doesn’t want him like a best friend. He wants him like _everything._

Jeremy leans, and Jean reacts, surging, his hands fisting in the front of Jeremy’s shirt. Their lips are a breath apart, and Jeremy can’t drag his eyes from Jean’s perfect mouth. He slides his hands up Jean’s arms, into his hair, and Jean’s breath hitches. 

_One heartbeat. Two. Three._

In the end, it’s Jean. It has to be, it has to be his choice. He knows what Jeremy wants, but no one has ever let Jean take what _he_ wants. Jeremy’s every nerve is on fire as Jean’s lips move up to his, and he curls his fingers in Jean’s hair as finally, _finally,_ there’s nothing unsaid or undone in between them.

Jean opens up beneath Jeremy in the most exquisite way. Jeremy kisses him deeply; tongues slide and heat builds, and fingers seek. It’s in the back of his mind, that Jean has likely never done this - not like _this_ \- before, and he is unsurprised to find he wants to make sure Jean never has to go looking for better.

Jean makes a noise in his throat, a noise that makes Jeremy _crazy_ , and then shirts are coming off and Jeremy is following Jean’s divine mouth back to recline on the bed, allowing Jean to feel the weight of him at the insistence of Jean’s tugging hands. Jeremy breaks away to breathe like he’s been drowning for twenty years, and _god_ , Jean is a sight with his hair, and his pupils blown, and his lips parted and just-kissed.

Jeremy buries his face in Jean’s neck before looking at him undoes Jeremy completely, and Jean arches up into him, gasping at teeth, and tongue and _so much._

“Can I?” Jeremy asks, his mouth on Jean’s again, and his hands searching. He wants to touch him, wants to make him feel how it _should_ be. How it _will_ be, every day with Jeremy Knox. He rocks back on his knees, his mouth finding the waistband of Jean’s tracksuit pants. “Can I, Jean?”

“ _Yes.”_

**Author's Note:**

> I love these two. Come be friends with me on [tumblr!](https://j--moreau.tumblr.com)


End file.
